West Chester U. students pleads to shooting BB gun out window

WEST CHESTER — A Chester County Court judge on Monday came face to face with an example of what residents in the southeast end of West Chester deal with on a regular basis — a West Chester University student with an alcohol problem.

“So you’re one of the number of vandals on South Walnut Street?” Senior Judge Ronald Nagle asked John Bujanowski, who was pleading guilty to having used an electrical box outside his home for target practice with a BB gun. “Were you drunk at the time?”

“Yes, your honor,” said Bujanowski, a senior at West Chester who was charged with disorderly conduct stemming from the incident in November in which a private security officer patrolling the “party town” area of the borough reported being shot at.

“Still drinking?” Nagle inquired.

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“Not as heavily as I was that night,” Bujanowski answered.

Bujanowski, 23, of Edgewater Park, N.J., was sentenced to one year probation and 100 hours of community service in exchange for his plea of guilty to the misdemeanor charge. He told Nagle he plans to attend graduate school in physical therapy when he graduates from West Chester in May.

Although the prosecutor in the case, Deputy District Attorney Thomas Ost-Prisco, initially told Nagle that the security guard, Maclain Brostrom of the ELPS Private Detective Agency, had been shot at, Bujanowski’s attorney said that was in fact not the case.

According to defense attorney John Pavloff of Pocopson, Bujanowski had been sitting in his room on the third floor of a house in the 300 block of South Walnut Street around 1:45 a.m. on Nov. 4, with a “red Ryder” BB gun. He had been drinking, and started shooting the gun at an electrical box located outside the home. Pavloff said Bujanowski and his roommates had, in the past, shot at targets like bottles and cans on the box.

This time, however, Brostrom was standing across the street from the house and heard the report of a BB gun. He saw some BB’s roll across the street in his direction, but it was clear that Bujanowski was not aiming the rifle at him or anyone else. When a police officer who responded to the scene asked Bujanowski why he had fired the shots, he said, “Because I’m drunk.”

Still, Nagle said, shooting a gun out a window towards a public street was not the wisest or most adult of behavior for a 23-year-old.

“Isn’t this kind of a stupid thing to have done?” the judge asked Bujanowski, who appeared in court with his family. “Aren’t you embarrassed? “

Bujanowski admitted that he was. “There is not a day that goes by that I haven’t regretted what occurred. I was just stupid. I’m sorry for the community, and I am definitely going to learn from this.”

Learn what, wondered the judge.

“To be more responsible for my actions,” he said.

The private detective agency had been utilized by the borough as a way of policing the southeast end of town to cut down on problems with rowdy behavior and alcohol-related crime caused by West Chester University students and others.